A Data Scientist Explains Odds of Dying in a Terrorist Attack

Here come the daily headlines of Al-Qa’eda, Taliban, ISIS, and all the lone wolf attackers out there from Pakistan to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Nigeria, France, Belgium, USA, Canada and list goes on and on.

Projected and orchestrated by media, sometimes it seems “terrorism” is the only cause of unnatural death that we face. And lives of millions of travelers suffer due to this inevitable “threat”. There were 2.84 billion commercial air passengers in 2011 alone with only 373 fatalities, so one’s chance of dying in the commercial jet is 1 in 7.6 million.

And odds of dying in a terrorist attack while on-board is 1 in 25,000,000 (25 million) and the overall average of dying in any kind of terrorist attack worldwide is 1 in 9,300,000 (9.3 million).

So in contrast, you are 14 times more likely to die in your bathtub than in a terrorist attack, 11 times more likely to die by slipping during a shower, 16 times by lightning, 517 times more likely to be murdered (there is on average one murder every 60 seconds worldwide), 991 times by self-injury, 500 times in a car accident (3,000 people die every day in road accidents worldwide), 450 times by falling, 118 times by accidental drowning, 41 times in natural disasters (earthquake, flood etc.), 25 times by choking on food, 13 times by a dog bite, 4 times by falling off a ladder, 1.8 million times by a heart disease, 1860 times by electrocution, 93 times by bee sting, and 3 times more likely to die by a snake bite or food poisoning.

If not convinced, here is another interesting set of statistics:

Odds of being an astronaut: 1 in 13,200,000

Odds of winning an Olympic Gold Medal: 1 in 662,000

Odds of becoming a President: 1 in 10,000,000

Odds of sighting a UFO today: 1 in 3,000,000

Odds of dating a Supermodel: 1 in 88,000

So, you have twice the chances of becoming an astronaut than flying in a plane doomed to crash due to a terrorist plot, almost the same chances of becoming a president than dying in a terrorist attack (isn’t it ironic?), three times more likely to sight a UFO today, 14 times more likely to win a gold medal in the Olympics, and 106 times more chances of dating Kim Kardashian.